HIP Kitchen

Back to School Meals Made Easy

ERIKA KUHR

Co-Director, Culinary Director

I can eat purple sweet potatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! And today I did just that, back to the weekday routine of full days of farm, institute, and family. It is full on here at HIP Ag, preparing for the internship, strengthening the team cohesiveness through meetings, communications, and council, plus prioritizing the list of to-do’s. Did I mention taking care of my three children too? GOOD thing I pressure cooked a pot of whole sweet potatoes last night!

The only sweet potatoes that all my children will eat are the purple ones. I ask Cyrus, “will you eat them in your lunch with butter?” He replies, “Yes, I will eat them in my lunch WITH butter.” “Yes!,” I think to myself, one meal that I can pack for my kids school lunch with little effort, but with the greatest reward as a mom on a mission to pack healthy and tasty lunches. (It is not easy, especially when other kids at school are accustomed to Costco organic snacks and sandwiches. I bet it is tricky, too, having a mom that puts foods in your lunch that aren’t like everyone else’s! Cyrus has confided in me that he is embarrassed when friends come over and they do not want/like to eat the foods we eat like cheesy cassava bread, fried plantains, kalo pizza, or blue corn muffins that are actually yellowish from turmeric. I continue to set the bar for ‘ai pono in the home, but I also feel that I need to balance it with American foods so that my kids do not reject it altogether. As with everything, I am continually seeking balance.

I hope you enjoy, and are inspired by all the simple ways that our family has consumed sweet potatoes!

1. Pre cook whole the sweet potatoes in a steam basket or bake. If you plan to have extra throughout the week, whole potatoes will last longer, compared to ones that have been sliced and cooked (more open surface area, more room for bacteria to grow).

Treat it like a baked potato, and have several toppings for the keiki to choose from: sour cream, sprouts, furikake, nutritional yeast, garlic chives, steamed vegetables…

I am grateful for organic sweet potatoes grown in Kohala, thank you Dillon Trumpy for continuing to grow these. Conventional sweet potato production involves fungicides and pesticides, I know this having spoken with farmers that have worked on these farms in Hawaii. Sweet potatoes are prone to nematodes and disease if crops are not properly rotated and amended.